President Barack Obama's campaign is offering Mitt Romney a deal: if he releases five years of tax returns, Obama's team won't criticize him for not releasing any more.

Obama campaign manager Jim Messina made the offer to Romney campaign manager Matt Rhoades in a letter on Friday. Messina says he is taking the step because Romney 'apparently fears the more he offers, the more our campaign will demand that he provide.'

Romney released his 2010 taxes and plans to release his 2011 returns. Messina says he wants Romney to provide three more years of returns.

Taxing times: Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney points to a white board as he talks about Medicare during a news conference at Spartanburg International Airport, South Carolina today

But the Romney campaign, which often says there will be no end to Democrats' demands for tax records, rejected the offer.

'It is clear that President Obama
wants nothing more than to talk about Gov. Romney's tax returns instead
of the issues that matter to voters,' said Romney campaign manager Matt
Rhoades.

Romney said that he’s paid an
income tax rate of at least 13 per cent for each of the last ten years,
which prompted an immediate retort from the Obama campaign to ‘prove it'.

Share this article

The latest tidbit of information about
his taxes to be given out under pressure and apparently reluctantly
increased pressure on him to release many years of tax returns.

He
has promised to release his 2011 tax return before the election but has
insisted he will not make public any tax returns from 2009 or earlier.

Speaking to reporters in Greenville, South Carolina, yesterday the Republican presidential candidate was clearly irked by being asked yet again about his taxes.

Doing the math: Romney talks to voters about Medicare... but got snappy when pressed once again about his tax-paying

Does it all add up? Romney turned focus from talk of how much tax he has paid on his reportedly $200million fortune, by dissecting his rival's healthcare plans

The former Massachusetts governor has
repeatedly said he will only release two years’ worth of tax returns.
Thus far, he has released his 2010 return and a summary of 2011.

‘I
have to say, given the challenges America faces - 23 million people out
of work, Iran about to become nuclear, one out of six Americans in
poverty - the fascination with taxes I paid I find to be very
small-minded compared to the broad issues that we face,’ he said.

‘But
I did go back and look at my taxes and over the past 10 years. I never
paid less than 13 per cent. I think the most recent year is 13.6 or
something like that. So I paid taxes every single year.’

The latest revelation about his taxes
came after he told ABC News last month that he would go back and check
whether there was any year in the previous decade in which he had paid
an effective rate of less than 13.9 per cent, which he paid in 2010.

His mention of having paid taxes every
year was in response to the claim by Senator Harry Reid, the Senate
Majority Leader, that an investor at Bain Capital, Romney's former
private equity firm, had told him that Romney had not paid taxes in ten
years.

Romney said: ‘Harry
Reid’s charge is totally false. I’m sure waiting for Harry to put up who
it was that told him what he says they told him. I don’t believe it for
a minute, by the way.

Put your money where your mouth is: Obama's campaign has asked Romney to reveal his tax returns so that voters can trust him

‘But
every year I’ve paid at least 13 per cent and if you add in addition
the amount that goes to charity, why the number gets well above 20 per
cent.'

As a Mormon, Romney is required by his church to give 10 per cent of his income to charity.

Lis
Smith, an Obama campaign spokeswoman, said in a statement: ‘Mitt Romney
today said that he did indeed ''go back and look'' at his tax returns
and that he never paid less than 13% in taxes in any year over the past
decade.

‘Since there is substantial reason to doubt his claims, we have a simple message for him: prove it.

‘Even
though he’s invested millions in foreign tax havens, offshore shell
corporations, and a Swiss bank account, he’s still asking the American
people to trust him.

‘However,
given Mitt Romney's secrecy about his returns, coupled with the
revelations in just the one return we have seen to date and the
inconsistencies between this one return and his other financial
disclosures, he has forfeited the right to have us take him just at his
word.’

The average effective federal tax rate for Americans is 11 per cent, according to the Tax Foundation based on 2009 figures.

Those
earning more than $10 million a year pay an average of 22 per cent. The
average rate paid by Romney, who is estimated to be worth more than
$200 million, is lower because most of his income comes from capital
gains, which are taxed at a lower rate.